A Visit From the Ghost of Election Debates Past

Less than a week now before the crowded five-party scrum, oddly billed as an election "debate" takes place. It will be moderated by the always delightful, insightful, and inquisitive Steve Paikin. (The Academy Awards this year had to settle for Jon Stewart.)

Patrick Ross, at the Nexus makes an interesting case for why this one matters, and how it stacks up against other watershed moments in modern Canadian political history.

Yet Harper and Dion, like Trudeau and Clark and Diefenbaker and Pearson before them, do have a historical matter that will be decided in the course of this federal election: namely, the issue of climate change.

Canadians have a historical choice before them: a choice between the frugal, cautious economic environmentalism of Stephen Harper, sprinkled with a healthy dose of skepticism, or the risky approach of Stephane Dion, tearing up Canada's taxation regime in the name of leftist apocalypticism.

Some interesting reflections. Read the rest here.